Course Strands and Dimensions of Learning
Means of interpreting and assessing
student achievement will involve Course
Strands and Dimensions of Learning.
Course Strands
communication, research/content, technology,
and collaboration - and scales which describe activities we typically see as
stages researchers move through in their development as readers, writers, and
users of technology.
Five Dimensions of Learning
Confidence
and
Confidence and independence in your own reading, writing, and thinking
abilities. We see growth and development when
learners' confidence and independence become coordinated with their actual
abilities and skills, content knowledge, use of experience, and reflectiveness about their own learning. The overconfident
student learns to ask for help when facing an obstacle; the shy student begins
to trust her own abilities and begins to work alone at times, or to insist on
presenting her own point of view in discussion. In both cases, students develop
along the dimension of confidence and independence.
Skills and Strategies
Specific skills and strategies involved in composing and communicating
effectively, from concept to organization to polishing grammar and correctness,
and including technological skills for computer communication and adherence to
APA style. Skills and strategies represent the "know-how" aspect of
learning. When we speak of "performance" or "mastery," we
generally mean that learners have developed skills and strategies to function
successfully in certain situations. In this course, it will be communicating as
classroom researchers using available resources-databases, experts in the
field, other colleagues and researchers and effectively communicating to an
audience of other educators. Some may opt to publish their research in academic
journals.
Knowledge and Understanding
Knowledge and understanding refers to the "content" knowledge gained
about new technologies, rhetoric, research methods, the topics you write about,
the methods of organizing and presenting your ideas to others, and so on.
Knowledge and understanding is the most familiar dimension, focusing on the
"know-what" aspect of learning. What is a research question that is
meaningful to me? What is my role, purpose, intention,
and design of my research inquiry? How well do I research about my interest
Use of Prior and Emerging Experience
The use of prior and emerging experience involves the
ability to draw on your own experience and connect it to your work. A crucial
but often unrecognized dimension of learning is the ability to make use of
prior experience as well as emerging experience in new situations. It is
necessary to observe learners over a period of time while they engage in a
variety of activities in order to account for the development of this important
capability, which is at the heart of creative thinking and its application. In
focusing, reflecting and designing our own research proposal and agenda, our
prior experience might be tapped to help scaffold new understandings, or
consider how ongoing experience shapes the content knowledge or skills and
strategies we are developing.
Critical Reflection
Reflection refers to your developing awareness of our own learning process, as
well as more analytical approaches to reading, writing, and communication. When
we speak of reflection as a crucial component of learning, we are not using the
term in its commonsense meaning of reverie or abstract introspection. We are
referring to the development of your ability to step back and consider a
situation critically and analytically, with growing insight into your own
learning processes, a kind of metacognition.
Researchers need to develop this capability in order to use what they are
learning in other contexts, to make connections, to recognize the limitations
or obstacles confronting them in a given situation, to take advantage of their
prior knowledge and experience, and to strengthen their own performance.
It is important that you are made aware of the course strands
and the five dimensions of learning. This evaluative process provides a
framework with which you can see and evaluate your own growth. As researchers,
you are measuring your own learning given the strands and dimensions,
considering them in relation to your prior learning.
EVALUATION & ASSESSMENT
Frances Vitali-
October 2006
I have approached
this inquiry research seminar course with participants and instructor equally
engaged as colleagues in academic pursuit of extending our professional selves
and learning through communication, research, technology, and collaboration.
The emphasis is on how we communicate identified areas of interest through the
work we do with our students in and outside of our classroom settings; what
research (literary & people) informs our practice; how we are using
technology to our benefit; and how we collaborate with others in a supportive
network through writing groups, school support teams, and other nurturing
venues?
In developing our
questions, the syllabus is designed to gradually lead us through text and
journal readings to understand the practitioner research framework guiding each
colleague to owning a meaningful question to systematically research following
a design, data collection, results, analysis, interpretation and reflection as
a formal proposal. Journal Reflections help colleagues uncover the obvious
direction of their thinking toward recognizing their research question.
Response Papers is a research technique to help synthesize and reflect about
pertinent information concerning a topic. As the culminating year of their
masters level work, the learning roles
are now returned to them, so to
speak, for each colleague will share as research practitioners what matters to
her as an educator; what she know about her topic; how she will design a plan
to carefully explore this window of discovery with her students; and articulate
her proposal and eventually her research story to her research community. We
are not there yet but the stage has been set, I believe, for each colleague is
progressing according to schedule.
As the instructor
of this course for the first time, I have relied on the former instructor,
Vicki Holmsten, to guide my planning. My role is a
coach who is beginning to know her team players, and who can individually and
effectively inspire them from the sidelines as they gain more confidence in
their question, the research process and themselves. The midterm preview panel
Oct. 9 is meant to be stop along the way
to share their research questions with a selected research community - to try it on for size to see where it
needs to be tailored for the final fit-before they committing
themselves to their question proceeding with the research process.
My goal is that
each colleague is recognizing their competence in each of the five dimensions
of learning and to extend their own learning experience and expectations beyond what do you want me to do in this
course to get a good grade to owning their own learning with confidence and
ownership to this is what is important
to me and I am exploring it in these ways. This deep level of inquiry will
extend to continuing the quality and insight within their respective learning
settings at school.
I honor, recognize and celebrate
the five dimensions of learning:
that each colleague owns, shares and builds upon as their intellectual history.
This is what they will draw from and upon in their practitioner research
process.
Midterm evaluation
________________________________________________
This midterm and final summary/evaluation form is based on the Learning
Record Online (LRO) for college level developed by M.A. Syverson at the CWRL of the